Super Ginormous

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  • I love Apple

    ipod shuffle icon

    Is it any wonder people have such a deep sense of loyalty to this brand?

    • They just gave me the second half of Season 10 of South Park, because I had bought the first half. I know a lot of people were originally ticked at the decision to split the 10th Season… but Apple made good.
    • I lost my iTunes library twice within a couple of months over sheer random acts … Apple made an exception in both cases (after lots of begging) to let me redownload my purchases.

    By the way, I visited my first Apple Store this weekend. (It was the one at the Lennox Square Mall in Atlanta, GA.) The store was awesome. I picked up an iPod shuffle while I was there and a Giggles game for Tyler. How could I leave empty-handed? The shuffle is gorgeous. I had a tough time narrowing down what songs I wanted on it… But man oh man, did I mention it’s gorgeous?

  • Pick Any Two

    We used to have a sign up in our offices at PowerServe that read:

    For service that meets your needs, choose two of the following:

    • Quality
    • Speed
    • Price

    Let’s face it, we’re a culture that expects all three. We want convenience, high quality, and extra low prices. That’s why Wal-Mart is so popular – because for most people Wal-Mart is an ideal place to shop for them. But you’re not going to get all three. You’ve got to give somewhere.Wal-Mart is convenient, because you can get all the stuff you need (and don’t need) all conveniently in one place. No problem, right? Wrong. Wal-Mart is a victim of its’ own success. Because so many people shop at Wal-Mart, there are more customers in their stores. This equates to longer lines when you want to check out. Right? That $.29 cents you saved doesn’t seem like much when you factor in that you had to wait 10 mintues to check-out at a busy store. Their automotive department is a prime example of this problem. They offer oil changes for less than anyone else out there. They’re using quality motor oils and whatnot, but when you go, you’re pretty much guaranteed a wait. Just because you can get an oil change for $29.99 doesn’t help the fact that you’re going to lose 2 hours of your time while you wait for a tech to get around to your car. Is saving a few bucks more important than your time?Tonight, I went to a Jiffy Lube and spent a little more for an oil change. Know what happened? I pulled my car in right away, and they had my oil changed, truck vaccuumed out, lights checked, tires refilled, air filter changed, in 10 minutes. I had 6 people working on my car at once. By the time I went to the waiting room, I had an associate approach me in order to check out. (I didn’t even have the chance to sit down.) Yeah, it cost me more by going to Jiffy Lube, but they didn’t waste my time. They provided great service right away and it’s more than worth it to me to pay a little more for the service because of that.I like saving money, but I hate wasting time. (Sorry if this is random… I wanted to get some thoughts out on this before I went to bed tonight.) 

  • Merry Christmas from PowerServe

    We decided to do something a little different this year… Merry Christmas

  • Screenshots of NEW Photoshop CS3 Beta

    Sorry Mac guys, I’ve only installed this on my PC laptop. The new interface is sweet. Device Central is going to be an awesome development tool to have at a designer’s disposal.

    read more | digg story

    Wow, the post made it to the homepage!

    And it’s had nearly 700 diggs. The other metric that blows me away is 25,735 views of the screenshots.

  • Tag, I’m it.

    Another day, another meme. Thanks for the tag, Jesse.

    Christmas MEME

    1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
    Hot Chocolate, with marshmallows.
    2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?
    Both. It depends on the gift :)
    3. Colored Light on Tree/House or White?
    White.
    4. Do you hang mistletoe?
    Nope.
    5. When do you put your decorations up?
    Early December is when I start. I eventually hope to finish putting them up/out sometime around Christmas.
    6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
    Deviled eggs.
    7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?
    Getting buttloads of Ninja Turtles from Santa. Me and my brothers were in heaven that morning.
    8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
    Can’t pinpoint an exact time. I think I sort of knew the truth at some point, but it’s the idea of Santa that’s more important than whether he’s real or not.
    9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
    Yes. An unfortunate necessity when you try to spend Christmas with both sides of your family.
    10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
    Randomly. :)
    11. Snow. Love it or dread it?
    LOVE IT. Miss it. :(
    12. Can you ice skate?
    Umm, not really. But I can fall especially well.
    13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
    Hmm, it’s hard to pick a single thing…. but I’d probably say my iPod is one of my faves.
    14. What’s the most important thing about Christmas to you?
    Being with family; celebrating the birth of Christ.
    15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?
    Cheesecake. I know it’s not strictly a holiday dessert. I just only tend to eat it during the holidays.
    16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
    Watching A Christmas Story over and over again.
    17. What tops your tree?
    An angel, because my wife says so. :P If it were up to me, we’d have an iPod on top, or something.
    18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?
    Giving. Though, receiving ain’t half bad.
    19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
    Hmm… Christmas in Hollis, by Run DMC? :)
    20. Candy Canes. Yuck or Yum?
    Meh. I’ve got to be in the mood for em.

    I’m tagging:

  • New WP Tiger Admin 3.0 Released

    The WordPress Tiger Admin plugin has been updated to version 3.0. It’s been completely redesigned, and has much better compatibility with the newest WordPress features. I’ve been using this plugin for quite some time now, and this latest release is phenomenal.

    read more | digg story

  • Change is afoot

    I’m going to begin the process of migrating the site over to Sandbox in a couple of days. Right now, I’m using something loosely based on Qwilm!, but I want something a little more standardized, with better semantic markup as the basis for my site.

  • Ripple

    It started with a simple post on Digg – “New Apple.com Design Coming”. (It has 1253 diggs as of right now.) A user reportedly found a design on someone’s site and posted it to Digg.com saying: “I found this image from desudesu.com. ‘It’s design test for Fantasy Interactive for the next generation of apple.com site’ says the caption. It looks quite great to me.”

    I caught it early, under Upcoming Stories,  before it even made it to the homepage. I posted the first comment:

    Looks nice, but I’m going to have to call BS. A “design test” doesn’t mean, “this is the new design for apple.com”. They probably asked the guy to submit a concept for a site he’d love to redesign.
    Sorry, no digg.

    All’s well and fine, right?

    Enter Kyle Neal of Warpspire.com. I subscribe to his feed (mainly because I’m interested in his work on Hemingway), and noticed a post from him within an hour: Spotting a fake: “New apple design”. Evidently, someone else noticed it too, because the story got Dugg. (Since yesterday, his post has received 1100 diggs.) Some of that traffic ended up bleeding over to my site because I had posted in the comments.

    I mention all of this, because yesterday I had double the amount of traffic (102 unique visitors) to my site than my previous high (56 visitors). (Yeah, I realize those aren’t real impressive numbers.) When you consider that my site doesn’t get a lot of traffic at all (maybe 30-35 unique visitors a day), this spike is pretty significant. People are always looking for ways to drive more traffic to their site, but sometimes all it takes is to get involved in a discussion. I’m sure Kyle’s site experienced a lot more traffic than that… but it’s interesting that the Digg effect rippled over to my own site to some extent.

    I use this site mainly for testing. I blog from time to time (fairly irregularly, I might add). But I’ve been able to boost my Google PageRank to a PR4 by continually gettting in on the discussion, whether it’s on Digg, Warpspire or any other number of sites. So if you’re looking for a good, legitimate way to drive traffic to your site, get involved, say something worthwhile, and people will take note.

  • Thirsty

    Full Throttle Family

    Lately I’ve been on an energy drink kick. If I had to choose a favorite, I’d probably say Full Throttle and its’ two other flavors, Blue Demon and Fury, would be it. (Sonic’s Full Throttle Fury Slush is awesome, BTW.) But I digress, that’s not really what I wanted to post about.

    At home, I drink a concoction that could be described as “Mud”, “Dirty Water”, “Dirty Toilet Water”, etc. It looks disgusting. Because the color of the beverage is a very – umm – odd-looking shade of brown. What is this odd concoction? It’s 50% Orange Juice, 50% Pepsi (or a cola of your choice). I’m not quite sure when or where I picked up the idea for this drink, but I love it. My wife, on the other hand, nearly gags everytime she sees me drink it. (And she didn’t appreciate how much Tyler seemed to like it either.) I’ll try to post a picture of it later. If I had thought about it, I would have snapped one last night while I was drinking it…

    I suppose it goes back to when I was a kid, when me and my brothers would mix “Suicides” together at fast food places. In Germany, we called them Mezzo Mixes, because Fanta actually had a soda out that was a combination of several soda flavors called a Mezzo Mix. Depending on my mood, I’ll mix most sodas together… Orange Fanta, Coke, and Sprite is a personal favorite, with Fruit Punch and Coke a close second. Funny thing is, the last time I ate at a Burger King I noticed something odd at their beverage counter… They have drink recipes decals on the soda dispensers! Mix 1 part X with 1 part Y and it makes Z. And here I thought I was the only sicko that enjoyed mixing it up a bit.

    What kind of weird drinks do you like?

    Speaking of beverages – check this out.

  • Interactive News

    The Augusta Chronicle This won’t be big news for people outside of the Augusta area, but I just noticed that if you are a registered user of the Augusta Chronicle website, you can comment on articles.This might make me visit their site more often. I know that newspapers have struggled with retaining subscribers as more and more people start to get their news online, and it’s going to take more innovation like this in order to grab eyes.

    I tend get my news from CNN.com, Google News, Digg, and a hundred other places. I usually avoid the local paper – partly because I don’t care too much for local news and partly because there hasn’t been any real reason for me to keep coming back to the Chronicle website.

    Now, if only they’d consider doing a daily digital delivery (via PDF or something)… I might subscribe to the paper all week long. (Right now, I only get Sunday papers delivered to me.) It would save trees…